I’m Going to Idea World!

Date: July 15, 2015

Author: astottler

Hello from LA!

This afternoon, I flew in to attend the Idea World Fitness Conference, as part of the College Discovery program. To say I’m excited would be an understatement! I’ve never actually been to downtown LA before-just in the area. I will definitely do a nice full recap of this trip and the sessions! I am mainly going to spin sessions and Nutrition/Science lectures, but there are also other fun things here like the Urban Party tomorrow night (not really sure what that will be like) and the big Nutrition/Fitness Expo. My morning begins bright and early tomorrow for a 7am spin class by Schwinn. I’m taking quite a few Schwinn courses while I’m here, and since I’m certified in Spinning brand of indoor cycling, I’m very interested to see how the philosophies of the two organizations are similar and different!

My morning began with a simple breakfast of eggs and mango, plus half of a Luna bar.

My workout today was lots of Olympic lifting with my trainer. My snatches were not so good today, but the cleans are getting a lot better, and felt good! Plus, my hip is feeling WAY better. I’m going to still baby it a bit though and try to only squat in a controlled manner (like a back squat, not a burpee). My puppy came to pick my up from my workout since my car was in the shop, and she had her first walk outside since she is almost totally vaccinated!

Once home, I was super rushed to pack, eat, and shower. Lunch was leftovers. Chicken breast, carrots, and asparagus with goat cheese. Plus the other half of my Luna bar.

The trip here was short and uneventful-the taxi ride to my hotel was super expensive and long though because this is LA! I have actually had the worst experience with my hotel thus far in that I wasn’t happy with how they charged me originally, and then it took FOREVER to get checked in. I guess it’s kind of an apartment complex so there’s no lobby to check in at exactly. On the plus side, my room is actually super nice. It’s basically a studio apartment with a full kitchen and everything. I’m less than a mile from the center where the event is held. I checked in today, and while where I’m staying is a good area and the expo is in a good area, Google maps routed me through a not so great area. Given I’m going to be by myself, I’m happy I found a much better (and more direct) route!

I was actually pretty lost trying to find the Convention Center. To make it worse, I walked through the area where the ESPY’s are going on! I finally got close enough to see people with IDEA bags walking away and was able to find it!

I stopped at a Carvery for dinner on the way back and got a salad with kale, avocado, and chicken. Perfect!

On the way back, I stopped at a grocery for some food and snacks. I’m not sure what the food situation will be like, and I’m worried about my stomach acting up, so I tried to really stock up. I’m hoping I’m not eating Luna bars for every meal! I found a salad for lunch tomorrow. I also tried soy nut butter for the first time. The verdict? I like it! It doesn’t seem as fatty as sunflower seed butter (which can be good or bad depending on what you’re looking for), and it definitely doesn’t taste like peanut butter, but it’s nice to mix it up!

It’s about 8pm here now, and since I have quite a big day tomorrow, I’m probably going to watch a little Netflix before calling it a night!

Have you ever been to a conference?

Day in the Life: Summer 2015

Date: July 10, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hello! I don’t have work today since I’m working Sunday, so I went to a 5:45am spin class this morning. I’m running on about 4.5 hours of sleep and am definitely going to take a nap soon! I wanted to do another day in the life post for while I work my summer job.

6:05am alarm goes off (with a day in the life post reminder)

Then I get ready for Crossfit and packed everything up for the day!

Then, I come downstairs to be greeted by a crazy puppy. Full disclosure-we’re having some behavioral issues right now.

Pre-Crossfit snack/breakfast: a little baking experiment-carrot oatmeal raisin granola bars!

6:45am: leave for Crossfit.

7-8am Crossfit

Workout:

Warmup/accessory:

3 rounds- 20 double unders, 8 bent over rows, 100m farmer’s carry with 2 25# plates

WOD:

7-14-21-28

pulls ups

wall balls

kettle bell swings

The original workout called for burpees instead of wall balls but my hip isn’t that great so I subbed wall balls with a shallow squat

We then finished with some ab work.

8am: Clean up and change into scrubs. I’ve never actually gone straight from Crossfit to work before so this part was new for me.

8:15am: Hang out in car, eat, browse blogs.

9am: Start work. It’s a fairly slow day at the vet today.

1-2pm: Lunch break! I don’t normally work 9-6, but it’s one of my favorite schedules because it’s pretty normal. When I start later or earlier, I eat at either 11 or 2/3!

Leftovers: BBQ chicken, coleslaw, mashed sweet potatoes.

I eat lunch in the break room with coworkers and also enjoy a few break room snacks. One of the vets brought in Jamba Juice for us!

6pm: Done with work! I get out right on time today. It’s a pretty dark sky.

I was planning on going to the track, but I get a text from a friend wanting to hang out, so I spend time eating a snack and debating my options.

Plus 2 squares of dark chocolate

6:20 Decide to do a slightly shorter track workout. Regret eating dark chocolate because 2 squares of 72% is a lot of caffeine for me right now!

Track workout was originally 8x400m, but I end up with 5x400m. Given I’ve done 0 speed work lately, that’s good enough for me.

7:10pm: Arrive home, and make myself a quick and easy dinner. I’m not super hungry since I just had a snack, so I make some frozen veggie/potato snacks. One flavor is sweet potato, the other is broccoli. With ketchup. Yes, they are Spongebob shaped.

Plus s small slice of my granola bar with sun butter.

Then, I shower off all the animals and get ready to go.

8pm: Leave to make the 25 min drive to school where my friends are living for the summer. I arrive around 8:30.

After debating what to do, since I have a car we go to get boba. They realize how small my car actually is. It’s actually kind of ridiculous.

I ended up getting Rose-Aloe tea. I think it was rose tea with chunks of gelatinous aloe? I would have preferred pearls, but I actually had no clue what I was ordering-all I cared was that it was decaf, and my friend got this and knew it was decaf!

Around 10, we head back to campus and meet up with my other 2 friends. I stay there until around midnight, and am in bed by about 12:30! If I had work the next day, I definitely would not have been out so late!

What is your typical day like?

Throwback Thursday: Crazy Crazy

Date: July 9, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Throwback Thursday-also known as the perfect opportunity to make use of a post I wrote 3 months ago and only just realized I never published. Oops.

So how about a 3 month throwback? I was a week away from my Napa Half, and was in the middle of sorority recruitment, while still dealing with my (then) mystery illness.

Things have been crazy around here lately, and I just wanted to pop in and say hi! This weekend was recruitment for my sorority, which meant that was literally all I did all weekend-Saturday we were there from 4:30 to 2am!

It’s fun meeting new people but this year was kind of rough for me. After feeling fine Friday morning, Friday evening I was feeling pretty awful again. Boo. So maybe the elimination diet isn’t working so well? I ended up too sick to participate in about 1/3 of rush. Luckily, everyone was so understanding. It’s so frustrating though!

^Pref night!

Throughout rush I was pretty much living off of Luna bars because they were a fairly safe bet for me (well, as safe as anything could be at that point…). I still don’t know exactly what is wrong with me, but I’m trying some new medicine that will maybe help.

That being said, I’m feeling pretty unprepared for my race next weekend-I skipped my final longish run-but I don’t have any big goals other than finishing. I’m going to say right now that I will most likely not post my time on here, because I don’t want the extra pressure to push myself given all health issues lately.

On a more positive note (sort of), I got something new:

It’s pretty cute. It’s a plantar fasciitis night brace. I had a sock, but I couldn’t get the sock as tight as I wanted without squishing my toes, so I wanted something with some room to breathe! This is pretty heavy duty, but my feet feel great when I wake up-even after standing on my feet for hours on end at rush!

Beides the bars, I’ve had a few delicious things that I managed to snag pictures of lately.

Dining hall corn tacos with rice and beans, plus collard greens dipped in honey mustard because they’re pretty plain and options are limited!

Egg salad on a rice cake, in the beautiful spring weather!

And this delicious salad from Trader Joe’s. It had chicken, sunflower seeds, dried cranberries, kale, carrots, cucumbers, cabbage, and a spicy vinaigrette. YUM.

Have you ever felt totally unprepared for a race?

Nectarine and Date Salad with Feta

Date: July 8, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hello! I hope everyone’s week is going well! Today, I’m sharing a recipe with you all which basically what I’ve been having for lunch every day at work, so stick around until the end of the post!

I started work at 7am today, so a quick breakfast was in order. Cherries+polenta+Luna bar. I probably eat too many bars, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. I currently have a healthy alternative baking in the oven which is a total experiment so we’ll see how that turns out!

I didn’t get to have lunch until 1:30, so I was pretty ravenous and tired by then! Lunch was a salad with dates, nectarines, chicken, and feta (recipe at the bottom).

Plus Mary’s crackers.

I’m trying not to get froyo at work more than once a week, but since I was so hungry, I had a small cup with blueberries.

After working the rest of the afternoon, I had a quick snack before Crossfit. A random bar I found that didn’t haven anything I’m allergic to (i.e. nuts-which nearly every bar has), a banana, and a couple of pieces of these freeze dried apple/raspberry balls.

Crossfit was good, but my hip has been bothering me lately when I squat for some reason, so I’m trying to be gentle to it. I worked on power snatches (not landing in a full squat), and did very shallow overhead squats in the WOD which was 12 minutes of overhead squats, push press, and push ups on the minute with an increasing rep scheme. Not a crazy intense one, but I got a good shoulder burn!

Dinner was a few Cooking Light recipes from the Cooking Light app. The app is so convenient-they even make meal pairings with main dishes and sides, and it’s easy to scroll through different recipes based on their principle component (like poultry). Today, we had BBQ chicken which I ate over a piece of gluten free bread, coleslaw, and mashed sweet potatoes with sage and browned butter.

For a little something sweet after dinner, I had a little sunflower seed butter and raspberry jam on gluten free bread.

Now-recipe time!

Date Nectarine Salad

Ingredients:

For the salad:

8-10 oz grilled chicken breast, chopped

1/2 c feta

2-3 nectarines, chopped

about 15 pitted dates, chopped

3 large handfuls of lettuce

For the dressing (adapted from Cooking Light)
3 T white wine vinegar
2 T olive oil
1 T minced shallots
1 T fresh chopped parsley
1 t Dijon mustard
1/8 t salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 garlic clove, crushed

Mix up the dressing, and then toss it all together!

Serves 3

Wiped

Date: July 7, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hello! I’m finally blogging on a week night. I finished my day, and am now awaiting a visit from my friend’s 2 new kittens! I only met them last week briefly at the vet, so I cannot wait!

So, what are my days looking like? I started my morning with a really hilly 3 mile run. Workouts before work are pretty essential for me because I’m allergic to everything at home (i.e. Charlie, Lilly, and Chloe), and I’m allergic to everything at work (i.e. every animal there), so a little workout and fresh air helps keep things under control. Side note: my hip has really been bothering my lately when I squat for some reason. Not the motion of equating, but being down in a low squat position. I went to a yoga class yesterday, but I also played a softball game yesterday which stiffened it up. Anyways, I’m trying to avoid squats for a little while.

Sidenote: Guess what? I’m going to IDEA World Fitness Conference next week! Is anybody else going to be there? I’m pretty pumped! I’m going as part of the college program, so hopefully I’ll get to meet other students! Additionally, I’m signed up for all kinds of spin workshops!

Anyways, post-run I was running a bit late so I had a super quick breakfast of an Oatmeal Raisin Luna bar and mango. For some reason I have so much trouble finding the oatmeal raisin flavor…

Today, I worked 8-4, which was a fairly ideal schedule in my mind. Evenings are usually pretty slow. At 12:30, I broke for lunch.

Lunch was Trader Joe’s chicken strips, brown rice, and leftover green beans. I haven’t been a fan of TJ’s chicken lately. There have been a lot of tendons or something in it lately and the texture has been kind of gross.

During my lunch break, I stopped in to the nearby froyo place for a small container of chocolate sorbet with blueberries and a couple of raisins.

Tonight was my spin teaching night, so I sprinted out the door at 4 to make the traffic-filled drive across the bay. Maybe it was the holiday weekend, but traffic wasn’t awful. I had a pre-workout granola bar in the car while driving.

I have to get to spin pretty early to avoid even worse traffic, so I’ve gotten in the habit of taking power naps in my car when I arrive. It makes a difference!

The class went pretty well. It was a smaller class than usual, but I think everyone got a solid workout in!

I came home and unleashed the ~~beast~~ puppy. She was a little crazy, but now she’s asleep.

The first week of work, I came home totally wiped, and after dealing with animals all day, I had little patience for my little puppy. Now that I’m getting more into the routine though, it’s getting a lot better! That being said, I’m looking forward to my pillow tonight!

Dinner was a Trader Joe’s salad with leftover cheesy polenta.

On Sunday night, my family made our annual 4th of July cake. Normally, we do a big sheet with a berry flag pattern, but we simplified since the holiday had already passed. This year, we used a gluten free chocolate cake mix.

For dessert tonight, I had a small slice of this. Unfortunately, my stomach doesn’t like something in this cake and I honestly have no idea what it could be, but I had my reoccurring illness issues on Sunday after having this, and I’m feeling kind of off now. My stomach is 99% healed, but there are some random things that are still iffy!

So that was my day! Also-I updated my Races page FINALLY!

What is your favorite granola/protein bar?